Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
So, are people now waiting for repawns?
That would also suggest there isnt ample.
Ample means there is enough. Waiting means there isnt enough.
I would find that really weird if it were the case.
Still you didn't write why a bidding system is a necessity. You just state over and over again how bad it is
I wanted to make this point but forgot. It's insane how so many people have missed this.
All this talk about, it's about the journey, not about just rushing to the endgame. Meanwhile you lock out certain features behind max level.
I understand Freeholds shouldn't be easy to obtain for everyone, but also they're Freeholds. Does that mean you can't farm (plant and harvest stuff), do animal husbandry, etc. until you're max level? In that case, you should rethink completely what Freeholds should be, and offer something to the rest of us who just want to own a house out there, and have a farm and an animal pen to farm certain resources/mats. And if you want Freeholds to be large businesses with inns and stuff, go ahead and make that a separate thing.
Overall it just doesn't sound like it matches the vision of making leveling more important and more time consuming, rather than just using leveling as a gate to the endgame.
At this point, I'm just going to wait and see what they do, and if they make any adjustments before Alpha 2, it's pointless discussing this any further.
And bots are advancing :P In runescape they have chat GPT 3.5 bots which are indistinguishable to other players and can hold a conversation with actualy players and not give it away.
Tbh if devs utilised chat GPT or similiar to run there own bots to act as rather realistic NPC tbh :P
With that being said: I hoped I could open a tavern that's in some remote location "at the edge of civilization" which has become pretty unlikely given the importance freeholds have in the crafting cycle now. That's a bit of a bummer.
Ultimately a lot remains to be seen and will only really show its efficacy (or lack thereof) during the Alpha and Beta.
My only other concern is as follows: Steven has been on record (Even in the most recent livestream) saying that professions and skills will be completed to the highest level. This will include Gear and weapons which Steven has said will be on par with the highest tier drops in-game.
If all the Freehold plots are taken up, which on high pop servers they will be, this is going to gate keep solo players from being able to achieve highest tier gear.
I'm aware of how group focused AoC is so this is probably intended but I think its a cause for concern regardless.
How will you fight them if you can't craft the best gear?
Why would they let you use their freeholds? It makes no sense to arm your enemies.
So, as casual, I would join these large guilds. Eventually they will help me get gear and I will help them defend whatever node I need to.
This is simply not true. There are bidding systems in other games like FFXIV and even tho it takes some time, (weeks) of you looking and waiting for one to be available, you CAN get eventually get one.
You are 100% wrong on that take.
Do you know why in FF14 they call the housing bids RNG? I don't consider bidding to be RNG.
Keep in mind, freehold will constantly rotate, they will be removed in Sieges constantly, while sieges on level 5 or 6 nodes will be rare, sieges on level 3 and 4 nodes will happen all the time.
Freeholds of inactive players will also be removed.
No, you can still do all the processing up to T3 "to a large degree" in nodes
Who can destroy a node? A large guild. Who has enough gold to get the freeholds? Large guilds.
Why would a guild destroy a node and don't buy all the freeholds?
It's like you saying a single player can compete against a corporation.
I am ok with the fact of never being able to own a freehold. Not by myself.
Like I said before, you will own one if you climb the guild ladder until you're trustworthy enough to be given ownership by a guild master.
Wrong. It takes multiple guilds/alliances to destroy a node.
Depends on the size of the node...
I wouldn't expect a single guild to be able to destroy even a level 3 node. If they can, Intrepid did a bad job at balancing the game, because if multiple guilds live on a node, it should take multiple (even more) guilds to destroy one.
Ok. If that's the case then, how do you distribute the freeholds then? Because you need several guilds to destroy a node, but isn't the system always bidding? So even if a small guild participates, how do they get one? There's no protection
Its not about not being able to get one, even if you are solo, you will, eventually, after a very, very long time have more gold available to spend on the freehold. If you are a small guild, you will have the gold eventually, you just need to save up - or get more guild members, nothing wrong with that.
Guilds put a considerable amount of effort in recruiting and building up their structure to have hundreds of people contributing to the same cause, why should a solo player or a smaller guild that has no effort spent with logistics have more resources in the same amount of time? Of course you won't get the freehold in the first few months, but eventually, you will get there.
See, that's is the problem. It's not about effort. A guild of 50 could put 10 times the effort of a guild of 400, doesn't mean that they will get the freeholds. It's about gold. If you have 500 people generating gold, it doesn't matter what you do, the gold will come. Effort is not a parameter of sucess, not ingame, not in real life.
It's like investing 1m. 4% of that is 40k, if you invest 1k, it's only 4.
All I see is here is immense power for the large guilds, but none for the small ones. Even if a small guild helps takes a node, how do you garantee they get a freehold? You can't. So another larger guild can come and buy the deed.
You are asking for equality between large guilds and small guilds. I am fundamentally against that philosophy for MMORPGs. We won't agree on this one, but gladly, I believe steven is on my side.
Leaving the freehold thing for a moment and speaking in general terms, in AoC if you want to take down or compete against a larger group of people, you need to become a larger group of people. Make friends, forge alliances, get people together and achieve or goal - don't sit around and complain for the developers. "guilds" are made of Players not NPCs guilds are not a "system" that is unfair.
The game has an equal playground for every single player - its your own Personal choice to not participate in a large guild so why do you expect to have access to the same things?
That's what Ashes is all about, that's what EvE online was all about, that's what happened in Lineage 2, in Archeage, small guilds and solo players in AoC will not have an equal chance of obtaining the highest tier of loot/housing or competing in the highest content. This applies to freeholds as well.
I think you're wrong thinking an MMORPG can't be solo-friendly. Or at least misguided. For me, the "massively multiplayer" part is simply to do with the number of players one might see and interact with, as opposed to, say, a first-person shooter where there might be 16 players in a game.
MMORPGs ever since Neverwinter Nights and Meridian 59 have had guilds, but rarely if ever have I found them to be mandatory in the MMORPGs I've played over the past few decades.
Even in a game like WoW I can experience the end game without being in a guild, assuming I have the time and patience to work towards it. I can still be a high end crafter without ever joining a guild.
Of course, some things require grouping to defeat, but beyond that I can play WoW entirely "solo". I can even solo most old content once I've over-levelled it.
One MMORPG I played explicitly had content and achievements aimed at solo players.
Anyway, the point is there's nothing inherent in MMORPGs that mean they can't or shouldn't cater to solo players who just want to exist in a vibrant living world.